Map, Journey and Costs

Note: prices are for 2 adults with baggage

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From	To	Mode	Duration	Cost
🇮🇩 Hotel Permata Indah Permai	🇮🇩 Ketapang Harbour	Taxi	00:09	£0.00
🇮🇩 Ketapang Habour	🇮🇩 Gillmanuk Harbour	Ferry	00:37	£1.74
🇮🇩 Gillmanuk Harbour	🇮🇩 Gsaskara Homestay	Taxi	04:38	£37.96
🇮🇩 Gsaskara Homestay	🇮🇩 Sanur Dream Beach	Taxi	00:18	£2.06
🇮🇩 Sanur Dream Beach	🇮🇩 Mushroom Bay Harbour	Ferry	00:33	£16.27
🇮🇩 Yellow Bridge Harbour Lembongan	🇮🇩 Gili Trawangan Harbour	Ferry	03:50	£64.48
🇮🇩 Gili Trawangan Harbour	🇮🇩 Matahari Terbit Port	Ferry	04:18	£34.88
🇮🇩 Matahari Terbit Port	🇮🇩 OYO 1755 De'balcon	Taxi	01:00	£6.07
🇮🇩 OYO 1755 De'balcon	🇮🇩 I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport - Bali (DPS)	Taxi	00:05	£0.00
🇮🇩 I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport - Bali (DPS)	🇮🇩 Labuan Bajo - Komodo Island (LBJ)	Plane	01:08	£66.93

Welcome back! We were wiped after our time on Java hiking up volcanoes for sunrise. We were desperate for downtime, so headed east to cut loose a bit.

Lembongan joins the list of places whose pronunciation we never mastered. It was affectionately known to us as Lemon Bon Bon 🍋🍬.

It’s one of the of the Nusa islands, a short ferry from Bali. It’s paradise, and we were able to score a private hut with breakfast and a pool for £13.20 per night 💪. We spent a whole day lazing around, and felt refreshed for it.

Lembongan is majority Hindu, Indonesia as a whole being majority Muslim. This meant there were lots of vibrant temples and offerings:

Offerings were laid on the ground outside of people’s houses. “Mind the shrine” was a common utterance.

We then hired a couple of electric bikes. Nusa Ceningan is connected to Lembongan via. a footbridge, and has a few sights to take in.

We cruised around, and a saw a cool surfing spot:

A “secret” beach:

And a viewpoint:

We found a bar with a pool in which you can enjoy some cheap beer and beige food, and took in the sunset.

We were such big fans that we spent an entire proceeding day there in that pool. Ideal.

Let’s start with some fun mangrove facts:

• They store vast amounts of carbon
• Indonesia tops the list for mangrove coverage
• They reduce coastal erosion and mitigate damage from tsunamis

There is a huge mangrove forest on Lembongan. We hired a kayak for a couple of hours and had a paddle around:

Devil’s Tear was another small stop. It’s a bunch of cliffs that get a good bashing from the tide. Lots of little rainbows are formed when the waves break:

Lastly, we did a day-trip to Nusa Penida. Weighing in as the largest of the Nusa Isles, we had to hire a taxi for a day to traverse the sights.

Diamond Beach was the first stop, it offered some cracking views:

And last stop was Kelingking. It’s meant to look like a dinosaur, but we couldn’t really see it. There were also great views up top:

We then got tempted to pop down to the beach you can see from the cliffs. The descent was extremely sketchy, and the heat was intense. Many tourists were trying to get down in flip-flops, which was stressful for everybody involved.

We made it down in one piece. And it was a cool beach:

I ran into the sea to cool down, but had to quickly abort as the tide was so powerful it knocked me over 😂. By the time we climbed our way back up we had to ask our taxi driver to take us to the port to catch the last ferry.

Gili T has a reputation as a party island. We did nothing to uphold this, and doubled down on chilling out.

Chilling out meant a lot of snorkeling for Laura. She met a few more turtles:

And realised that you’re never more than 2 metres away from a motorbike in Asia. Even when you’re snorkeling:

I sat on the beach and read a lot 🤓.

Gili T had some ace sunsets on offer:

And a definitely dodgy showing of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, released that very month:

Multi day boat trips around the Komodo Islands are very popular with backpackers in Indonesia. For a modest amount of wonga you can grab an all-inclusive 3 day 2 night cruise around some beautiful islands.

Max and Leo, of previous post fame, also had a Komodo boat trip on their travel wish-list. We had a cracking time hanging out with them on Java, and were fortunate that our timetables aligned.

We caught a speedboat back to Bali to meet up with them. It was by far the scariest transfer we’ve had this year. The waves were intense, causing the boat to be catapulted all over the show. Grim faces were abound, there was a collective sigh of relief when we pulled into port. We vowed to avoid the cheap ferries in future.

A short flight later, we made it over to the town where cruises around Komodo depart.

Max and Leo were on the same page as us when it came to tours in Asia. If you book online in advance, you will end up paying a huge premium. Often around 50%. We learnt that supply vastly outweighs demand. To bag the best deals you are very much best off haggling for a discounted spot in person, the night before departure.

This was high-stakes poker though. If we wanted to do the 3 day cruise, we had to seal the deal that day.

What followed was a tiresome afternoon of traipsing the harbour under the baking sun. There were tens of agents along the harbour, and they were all trying to sell us spots on the same boat. This made us weary that our theory did not hold. We may not be on the beneficial end of the supply/demand equation.

Indonesian health & safety leaves a lot to be desired. This was on a busy street in the town, the manhole had a 6 foot drop:

After many hours of haggling, we were getting nowhere near the price we’d heard possible. Max needed two cakes to pick up his mood. We were unsure whether to settle for a suboptimal price, or hold out even longer for a price drop. We held out, got a very good price, and squandered it on pizza in celebration 😂.

The boat dudes wanted paying in cash. Nominal values of Indonesian Rupiah are gigantic compared to sterling. One pound sterling is 19,075 IDR! We felt like billionaires:

We got very lucky with the mix of people aboard the boat. Aside from us, there was an Australian mother and son, a French couple, and Chinese couple who were professional travel bloggers.

Everybody got along really well, it made for a great atmosphere aboard.

Our room was pretty good:

Sleep wasn’t the most ample, as we were next to the engine room (the engine ran 24/7) and had a particularly potent chemical loo.

The crew kept us well fed between stops:

And there was a lot to see on the way.

The first stop was a short climb up a viewpoint. It offered great views:

We had a bit of a snorkel afterwards. The were some cool fishies. As we went back to shore, lots of baby reef sharks were swimming around:

Our next snorkel stop offered views of starfish:

They were very cool and abundant!

Snorkeling came to an abrupt end as a guide spotted a Lion Fish. He told us that the slightest touch from one would prove fatal. Everybody climbed onto the pier without hesitation 😂. Later research suggests that touching one wouldn’t be pleasant, but he was definitely hamming up the fatality risks.

We ended the day watching Flying Foxes at sunset from our boat. They were really cool to see. They’re a type of Megabat, with wingspans of around 1.5 metres.

Thousands of them swooped out of forested islands at sunset. It was an incredible sight to see, although a photo unfortunately doesn’t do it justice:

We had a super-early start to climb up a viewpoint on Padar Island for sunrise. There were some great views from atop:

Another short stop took us to a beach famous for pink sand. It was fun to hang out there. The Chinese bloggers were modeling a sun hat.

The big ticket item of the tour was a wander around the national park on Komodo Island. It’s one of the few places in the world in which Komodo Dragons live. It very much felt like jurassic park.

Komodo Dragons are fearsome. Up to 3 metres long, they weigh in at 70 kg. Their powerful bite can tear a person in half. To top it off they have a venom gland, and by some reports harbour bacteria for which there is no anti-biotic. Touching one can be fatal.

A couple of local guides, armed with wooden sticks, told us all of these facts. So we were a bit on edge.

We managed to get right up close to one:

We were dubious about whether he was being treated well. The rangers said he’s always in the same place. He was extremely docile. Research suggests that this probably meant they were lacing his food with sedatives 🙁.

He then took us to another spot, where we saw some extremely active Komodo Dragons. They were feasting upon a carcass which, despite their claims, must have been placed there by a person. They scarpered upon sight of us, thankfully.

A small stop off at a sand bar in the middle of the ocean with some ace snorkeling:

The last stop on our trip brought even more turtle swimming:

This section of our Indonesia trip was extremely watery and epic. Join us next time as we top off Indonesia with a hike up Rinjani, a volcano that was quite a feat to summit!